Her Sweetest Downfall
by Chagrin and Roses
Summary: Raw and uninhibited, they groaned and trembled. They pulled hair and bit shoulders and scratched backs. They forced anger into each movement, and wished they knew why they had to abide by rules they didn’t care to understand." E/T angsty goodness.


**Author's Note:** Okay, so first story. It's unbeta'd, but the nickname grammar nazi has been thrown around, if that's an indicator of anything. Longtime fanfic addict, first foray into writing, but this has been bugging me for a while, so I decided to finish it. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or any of it's characters.

The road made a sharp turn in front of her, revealing a wall of ancient evergreens poised and ready to make shrapnel out of her pretty, foreign car. She didn't need her above-average reflexes to make the turn. She had traveled this road many times in a past life.

As she smoothly turned the wheel, the scarlet satin of her shift bunched at her waist. Her sister was (singlehandedly) carrying on a conversation about, well, she didn't really know. The sister assumed that she was preoccupied with driving. At least, that's what she told herself. There was no reason that she should be trying to comfort her. No one knew she should be comforted. She frowned at her convoluted inner monologue, and Kate pretended not to notice, preferring instead to comment on the prodigious amount of determination it must have taken to hang all those lights.

***

The first time she saw him, it was winter. The barren landscape around her family's cabin was awake and wild with flurries of snow. A man who had forever changed her and her sisters' lives, the traveling doctor, had approached, followed immediately by a shock of bronze hair and a grey coat. Her centuries before the doctor's arrival, before his restrictions and regulations, were spent hunting and enjoying her prey fully. She was glad there were so many legends based (even roughly) on her exploits. She thought she had dreamed of fame when it was possible so many centuries ago, and was pleased anyone remembered her, negative connotation or not.

When the bronze-haired boy was close enough, she noticed his carefully unaffected mien, which quickly transformed to one of self-loathing when he thought no one was looking. He was loyal to the doctor, but fierce and arrogant to anyone who he condescended himself to speak to.

It wasn't her place to help him. That was the doctor's job, the doctor's responsibility. But that didn't stop her. Newborns were strangely enticing; so driven on instinct, so responsive, so _dangerous_. Even to her. She'd grown bored of self-control, of always scanning areas, of avoiding causing changes in an ecosystem. Her kind was exponentially powerful, so exponentially higher on the food chain than its prey, and yet she was forced to make sure there wouldn't be an overabundance of _salmon_ when she killed a bear. She still didn't fully understand the value of human life; the reason behind her abstinence was curiosity. Humans could be so interesting… but not nearly interesting enough to prevent her from taking the neophyte on a little field trip.

Needless to say, he wasn't very responsive. He preferred to spend his days locked in a room, pathetically contemplating his existence until he could no longer resist his thirst then violently bursting out of his lair and running into the forest. But the doctor was away, and no one was there to run after him and make sure he behaved himself. She guided him to a clearing close to a small fishing village and herded a group of weary travelers towards him. That poor boy had never tasted the nectar that was human blood, she reasoned, and she mind as well encourage a supervised inevitability.

She watched him hunt, still sloppy, but undeniably graceful. His white shirt was torn as a horrified fisherman tried to pull a knife. She wasn't greedy. She only took two. When they were all drained, he stood as still as a statue in the middle of the small field, his eyes wild and refulgent from his recent meal; blood streaked on his cheeks and chest where his prey uselessly struggled.

He was magnificent.

Maybe it was the strength she felt surging through her limbs or the fact that she was still mostly running on instinct, her body urging her to take whatever she wanted, but regardless of what it was, she found herself bounding across the meadow, closing the space between them. Because what she wanted was _him_, red eyes and torn shirt and smeared blood.

It wasn't slow and romantic, there were no grand professions of love or secret affections. He was there, and she was there, and they were unsatisfied, and doing everything in their power to make their lives just a little bit more gratifying.

And they'd be damned if it wasn't a pretty good solution.

Raw and uninhibited, they groaned and trembled. They pulled hair and bit shoulders and scratched backs. They forced anger into each movement, and wished they knew why they had to abide by rules they didn't care to understand. Against a tree or against the back side of the cabin, in the meadow after a hunt or in the new car the doctor had brought back from Chicago, but never inside. No, in that realm, he was the obedient (if not sullen) outcast where she was the dominant of her three sisters. They rarely spoke, and she ignored the slight pulling feeling in her stomach when he left a room.

But one day (she remembered it being fall, but seasons tend to run together in a millennium), as they lay side by side after a particularly macabre hunt and "release," their chests heaving for no reason other than buried instinct, he carefully rolled over to face her. His gaze never leaving hers, he flicked his tongue out to meet his thumb and with the wet digit wiped a trace of blood from the corner of her lips. His hand paused there for just a moment too long, and she not only ceased heaving, but breathing. So slowly it took a minute before she realized anything was happening, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers.

It was a nice kiss, a sweet kiss, the kind of kiss you could only hope your first could be. His breath, sweeter than she remembered, flooded over her face and tingled her ear lobes. His lips applied only soft pressure and his tongue traced strange patterns on her lower lip. But the kiss was tainted with something she couldn't determine. And when she began to wonder what exactly his intentions had been, the kiss ended abruptly. She was left unsatisfied, and his face held no trace of emotion. Then, without warning, he walked away. He stood and swiftly walked south, out of the shelter of the redwood whose limbs stretched gracefully above her, and never looked back.

When she gathered her thoughts and returned home, she learned that both he and the doctor had left. Apparently, he was no longer a threat to human life (though his eyes still shone burgundy from the blood they drank only hours before) and the doctor had a job waiting in Wisconsin. They had left, presumably for a long time, and he hadn't even said goodbye.

Her stomach wrenched when she suddenly realized what had tainted the kiss: disappointment. It had been his way of testing if she meant anything to him, if she was worth it. He had tried to force himself to feel something, _anything_, for her and he didn't. She wasn't worth his trouble. Rejection and self-loathing swept through her veins because in that kiss, she _had_ felt a foreign, tender emotion that she never knew she harbored.

As quickly as she could, she buried her own disappointment. She couldn't help but question her own worth, though. Just what aspect of her personality had been lacking that made her so undesirable? He didn't seem to mind her bad habits when he was buried inside of her. But she wouldn't allow herself to become bitter or resentful. All she could do was try to forget.

She couldn't.

The Cullens, the doctor and his new wife, her bronze-haired boy, and eventually four others, were the closest thing she and her sisters had to family. They visited often, and she couldn't help but notice that all were paired up but one. She couldn't forget, and she couldn't stop trying.

But every suggestion she made to him, every tilt of the head and flash of leg was quickly and forcefully rejected. And eventually, she learned that he was finally happy, that he had finally found someone who made him happy. _His long-awaited _companion, they called her. She was a human. Her name was Bella; apparently, she lived up to the name. She could give no excuse for not attending the wedding although her mouth turned sour as she appraised the creamy, expensive paper.

***

At the reception, she and Kate stood in the greeting line behind a chunky, middle-aged man with a moustache and his overly curious wife. They wouldn't stop staring at her, but she barely noticed. She was anxious, and eager to see the girl who claimed her coveted prize.

She had never seen him so happy. His eyes, now no longer burgundy but the topaz of a practiced "vegetarian", gleamed with joy as he looked in adoration at his bride. His bride, his Bella, was a thin, wispy thing, with a warm, open, heart-shaped face and brown eyes set just a stitch wide. Her features were rounded rather than angular, her upper lip was just a little bit too big in proportion to her bottom lip, and her fingernails were bitten. But these imperfections somehow made Bella beautiful. Her husband evidently thought so. They looked as though they were made to be a pair: like salt and pepper shakers or candlesticks, they somehow fit together.

When she was introduced to Bella, recognition and intimidation flashed in her wide-set eyes, but no other part of her moved.

"Welcome to the family, Bella" she said and she tried _so damn hard_ to keep the acerbity out of her thoughts but he still flinched and she frowned. Even now, even 90 years later, she was still transparent to him. Nothing could have bothered her more.


End file.
